Since the first years of the 21st century, the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, classified as the most overwhelming social actor since its emergence in the mid 1980s, finds itself in crises, with its principal organizations marked by tensions and conflicts. With a departure in the fragmentation of the indigenous movement, the context of the study is the impact of issues related to the concepts of class and ethnicity. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of the topic, the approach is based on a comparative study of different historical periods. The theoretical part of the study mainly focuses on analysing the concept of social movement in relation to indigenous movement. By comparing different periods, the study seeks to demonstrate that the inter-relationship between class and ethnicity has changed due to the context. For example, the revival of once-impotent leftist parties and movements has altered the relations of power and the incentives that strucktured past linkages between the indigenous movement and the political left. Thus, due to the meteoric rise of Rafael Correa and his radical political project, the indigenous movement is confronted with a new kind of challenge. In this context, the concepts of plurinationality and interculturality have emerged and further polarized the positions both between the left and the indigenous movement and between the two indigenous organizations: CONAIE and FENOCIN. In light of these aspects, the ambition of this study is to emphasize the importance of highlightning the concepts of class and ethnicity, when analysing the cause of the current fragmentation of the indigenous movement in Ecuador.

Em 1977, a Alfa-Omega, uma editora de oposição ao regime militar, publicou Em Câmara Lenta, de Renato Tapajós. Foi a primeira obra nacional, produzida por um escritor que atuou em um grupo da esquerda armada, a trazer uma reflexão crítica sobre as estratégias da guerrilha e a denunciar o emprego brutal da tortura pela repressão. O autor participara da Ala Vermelha, um agrupamento urbano de influência maoísta que empreendeu ações armadas, e por isso cumpriu pena de 1969 a 1974. Divulgado por todo o Brasil, o livro despertou a fúria de setores conservadores e levou a um episódio inusitado: em julho de 1977 Tapajós foi preso em São Paulo e ficou dez dias incomunicável, sob a acusação de que Em Câmara lenta era \"instrumento de guerra revolucionária\". Isso apesar de o livro não ter sido proibido e não ter, do ponto de vista legal, nenhum empecilho à sua circulação. Somente 15 dias depos da prisão de Tapajós, a obra foi censurada e sua venda, proibida. A partir das intricadas repercussões desse fato, o propósito principal deste trabalho é procurar demonstrar como a experiência da luta armada se transformou em narrativa literária. Para tanto, apresentamos um estudo sobre a história do livro, sobre os procedimentos empregados tanto na formação da culpa dirigida contra Renato Tapajós (com base em documentos do Departamento Estadual de Ordem Política e Social, DOPS, de São Paulo, produzidos durante a investigação policial) quanto os utilizados pela defesa do caso, bem como a respeito da recepção crítica e do teor testemunhal presente no romance / In 1977, Alfa-Omega, a publish house which opposes the Military Regime, published Em Câmara Lenta, by Renato Tapajós. It was the first book to analyze the leftist guerilla groups strategies and to denounce the brutality of the torture enforced by the military and the police against the activists of those groups. Tapajós had been a militant of Ala Vermelha, an urban Maoist guerilla group, and had been jailed from 1969 to 1974. Publicized all over the country, the book was furiously received by the conservative sectors of Brazilian society. In a surprising move, Tapajós was jailed in São Paulo in July of 1977 and stayed 10 days without any communication, under the accusation that Em Câmara Lenta was a \"tool of the revolutionary guerrilla\". Formally, the book was not forbidden and legally, there was no problem to publish and publicize it. Just after 15 days of Tapajós got the jail, the book was formally censured and it was made illegal to sell it. Taking in consideration the complex repercussions of this event, the initial aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the leftist guerrilla experience was transformed in a literary narrative. In order to do that, I present a study of this book history, the criminal procedures enforced against Renato Tapajós (using the documentation of the State Department of Political and Social Order, DOPS, the political police of São Paulo, produced during the police investigation) and in favor of him, as well as the testimonial narrative of the romance and its critical reception by the public and the specialists.

Leftist governments are not very popular in media. However, South America seems to have ignored the critics and has elected several left wing governments in the recent years. This is also the case of Ecuador, a relatively small country, which has gone through interesting political and economic reforms since 2007. This thesis will try to evaluate the economic performance of Ecuador after this change happened, within the context of the general regime change to leftist or anti-neoliberal policies in the rest of the South American continent. The performance will be first compared between the countries according to their government's ideology through an econometric analysis of a group of economic, socio-economic and perceptual variables. After that, a more detailed analysis will be performed on Ecuador's indicators. Interestingly, results show an overall improvement of economic and socio-economic conditions in the countries under the leftist rule, which relies on a strong civic support, compared to the countries still following the neoliberal policies. The case study of Ecuador pretends to provide an example. of a successful performance since the country turned left in 2007.While this area is rarely analyzed, this thesis contributes some knowledge to the field about effectiveness of the current political economy in Latin America Moreover, it contributes to undermine critics often widespread in the media in cooperation with certain states and organizations for keeping the current unequal distribution of power and wealth intact.

The aim of this thesis is to place Slovak political party SMER in the political and party system of the Slovak Republic and attempt to analyse ideological and programmatic development of this party. The author devotes attention to development of SMER from the emergence in 1999 until last general elections in 2012. First chapter seeks to describe evolution of socialism and following ideologies including the concept of the Third way which was reflected by some Western European social democratic parties. The second chapter is dedicated to left-wing political parties in Czechoslovakia and lately in Slovak Republic. This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section is about parties existing before 1989 and the second one devotes attention to parties after Velvet Revolution in 1989. Next part of this work is focused on the SMER itself. Author describes three phases of development of this party including emergence in 1999, opposition activities between 2002 and 2006 and phase of hegemony following after 2006. The purpose of the last part of the thesis is to analyse ideological and programmatic development of SMER and highlight some problematic features of proclaimed social democratic orientation.

With the rise of the Popular Front during the 1930s, the American Left came together under the symbols of the “people” and “America,” and as its ranks swelled with modernity’s disenfranchised, radicals utilized the structures and discourses of modernity in the name of political struggle against exploitive American capitalism and fascism abroad. Science fiction and its devoted fan community were among these structures and discourses. Though both were largely conservative, entwined with American corporate capitalism, one group of fans embraced Communism and hoped to politicize science fiction and its fandom. The Michelists, as they called themselves, worked through the established channels of science fiction and fandom advocating a unique Marxist understanding of science fiction. This report situates them within the Popular Front, particularly its discourses of science and popular culture, and highlights how the particularities of the genre and its fandom shaped their political beliefs and actions. / text

The Graduation work "Coherence between social environment and conversion to extremism" sets forth an insight into the issue of extremism and socially excluded locations.The aim of the work was to find relations between these two notions. The extremist scene in the Czech Republic was described in details as well as the crime connected to extremism, and psychological expert account of extremist crime perpetrators. Further, the situation of socially excluded locations was introduced, their increase within recent years, and especially problems of children growing up in these locations. Also were mentioned possible mental deprivations, which may occur at children from these location. In the practical part, 37 directed interviews were carried out with Czech extremist parties (both right and left - wing) members. Based on these interviews a conclusion was reached, whether life in socially excluded location may influence an individual's eventual conversion to extremism.

This thesis interprets the unification process that the Turkish left undertook during the 1990s as a redefinition and re-identification of leftist values according to the recent changes in the economic and political areas in the world. This redefinition process will be investigated by looking at the &Ouml / DP (Freedom and Solidarity Party) case, the main task of which was defined by the founders as the unification of various leftist movements as well as the representation of the new social movements. For this purpose, different theoretical perspectives concerning the new social movements will be read by means of observation of their position in the &Ouml / DP. It will be investigated, to what degree the &Ouml / DP was successful in unifying and including the new social movements. In that sense, this work will emphasize the role of the &Ouml / DP in the history of the Turkish leftist movement.

This thesis examines the political trajectory of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) during the period from the 1982 eviction of the Palestinian factions from their headquarters in Beirut, to the 2006-07 division between Hamas and Fatah in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). During this period, the PFLP experienced a process of decline that resulted in its marginalisation within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the wider Palestinian national movement. This study addresses the issue of the PFLP’s decline by focusing on its own political agency to determine the role of policy and decision making, ideology and political narrative in the marginalisation process. This work therefore, on the one hand, aims at putting the PFLP’s decline into historical perspective, identifying it as a process rather than simply the effect of outstanding events as it is often argued. On the other, its goal is to ascribe to ‘subjective factors’, namely aspects directly linked to the PFLP’s agency, the adequate weight in determining its decline. This appears particularly significant as the weakening of the Palestinian left has been frequently explained as a by-product of global and local external or ‘objective’ developments such as the downfall of the Soviet Union or the emergence of political Islam. By providing a comprehensive and processual analysis of the PFLP’s decline, this study not only aims at complementing the literature on the Palestinian national movement, which still lacks a focused approach on the main Palestinian leftist force. It also aims at shedding light on a major cause, and its historical origins, of the current Palestinian political impasse, namely the absence of an alternative between Hamas and the PNA’s governing entities, both crippled by a legitimacy crisis and unable to progress Palestinian interests. By virtue of its close survey of the PFLP’s conduct, a further goal of this thesis is to address the historical role of the PLO and its de-facto heir, the PNA. What is evidenced is the double, and contradictory, role of the essential but also constraining framework that the PLO and later the PNA represented for the PFLP’s policies. The focus on the PFLP’s political agency allows the identification of a pattern in its policy which affected negatively its standing within the Palestinian national movement. Throughout the period addressed, policy fluctuation marked the PFLP’s action, undermining the effectiveness of its political line and jeopardising its political weight. The present study highlights how such a policy fluctuation pattern originated from major dilemmas and contradictions that the PFLP had to consider while producing its policies. The main dilemma, informing all other sources of tensions affecting the PFLP, has been defined as an ‘opposition-integration’ dilemma. In other words, the PFLP, while opposing the PLO leadership’s policies, first and foremost its quest for a diplomatic settlement with Israel under US patronage, needed to maintain its integration within the PLO regime, which represented an essential economic and political framework. This produced inconsistent, ‘fluctuant’ policies that prevented the PFLP from maintaining its political weight and stopping its marginalisation process. This opposition-integration dilemma was combined with other sources of tensions marking the PFLP such as: relations with other PLO opposition factions, relations with Arab partners, its contacts with Palestinian Islamists, the confrontation with the PNA after the 1993 Oslo accords or the internal divide between the exiled leadership and the cadres located in the OPT. The PFLP’s official publications, mainly retrieved from its mouthpiece, Al-Hadaf magazine, embodied the main source upon which this study relies. Beside this corpus of documents, other primary sources, such as documents issued by relevant actors, have been scrutinised, while all information has been read against the background of the wider academic literature currently available on the Palestinian national movement. This research also drew information from interviews with former and current PFLP members as well as with experts of the Palestinian national movement.

1 Abstract This MA thesis discusses contemporary US literature in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1956 in order to see how the US was represented through the chosen American writers and their works. The first two chapters look at how the parallel canon was established, both from historical and theoretical perspective. The third chapter discusses Langston Hughes as the representative of American poetry. It shows how Hughes was used to draw attention to racial inequality in the US. Howard Fast as the superstar of the "Czechoslovak America" is the focus of the fourth chapter. The cases of both Fast and Hughes show that contemporary US authors published in Czechoslovakia at that time were chosen for the way they depicted the US racial and social inequality and the repression of political opposition, and identified themselves as members of the so called progressive America. Reading Hughes and Fast from the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain contributes to Czech scholarship on the 1950s and adds new perspectives to the contemporary reconsiderations of American leftist writers.

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